A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon by Ken Scholes

Author:Ken Scholes [Scholes, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Frederico lay in his bed feeling the sweat dry on his skin. “I bought you a house today in Espira,” he told her.

She giggled. “A ghost house?”

He smiled. It had become a game between them. “Yes,” he said. “On the coast of my ghostly empire.” Images of palm trees and white sands flashed behind his eyes. “It’s always warm there.”

“Like home,” she said, “but not an island.”

“Not an island,” he agreed.

She sighed and the sound of it was like soft hands upon his skin. “I suppose you think you’ll carry me away from my father’s tower in a large white ship after paying him some enormous dowry?”

“I suppose,” he said.

“And what if he refuses my hand?”

Frederico stretched and stifled a yawn. “I do not think he will. But if he did, I would persuade him otherwise.”

Amal laughed. “You do not know my father.”

“And he does not know me.”

She was silent for a moment and when she spoke, the play was gone from her voice. “Who are you truly, Frederico? I call you ‘ghost’ and make light of your empire but I’ve been through the library and I’ve found nothing. Where do you live? Where are these nine seas you sail in search of me? And are you truly as wonderful as you seem or are you just some whispering memory of a Younger God long dead and captured within this bauble I’ve found?”

He closed his eyes. “If I am wonderful, I think you’ve had a part in making me so. And I could ask the same of you. I’ve spent enough gold searching you out to finance a regional government for two years. I’ve found no island paradise. No silver tower. No record or recollection of the name Y’Zir in any of a thousand places I have searched. Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if you’re not the ghost.”

“Maybe we both are,” she offered.

“Perhaps. If so, then you’ll not mind my ghost house in Espira.”

She laughed. “And why would I live in Espira rather than with you in your ghost palace?”

He’d told her little of his wives; truth be told, he’d not thought of them since meeting the girl. And he’d not spoken of Jazrel at all. That loss seemed a private thing to him or at the very least, something to share when their eyes could meet and their hands could touch. “Eventually,” he told her, “you would live here with me. But these matters are...complicated.”

Amal sighed. “I would imagine so. Being an emperor would be frightfully complex, I should think.”

“It has its moments.”

“So does being the daughter of a wizard.”

Frederico laughed. “I’m certain that it does.”

“You know I’ve asked my father’s mechoservitor about your empire and your nine seas.”

“His mechoservitor?”

“His metal man,” she said. “Surely you have mechanicals in your empire?”

A metal man? Frederico thought about the handful of mechanicals he’d seen. Just last week, he’d seen a bird made of metal that could fly and recite verse. “A few,” he said. “Mostly small things. Nothing so elaborate as a man.

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